Glossary · Last verified July 2026

The Vocabulary of Agent Governance

A young category runs on borrowed words until someone defines them properly. These are the terms security, compliance, and engineering teams use when AI agents act on real systems: each defined in under 60 words, each backed by a concrete data point, none padded.

AI Agent Governance

The infrastructure that controls what agents may do, enforces it at runtime, and produces verifiable evidence.

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Behavioral Firewall

Enforcement between agents and the systems they act on: what is not allowed does not execute.

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Observability vs Governance

Telemetry describes behavior after the fact; governance constrains it before execution. The difference, side by side.

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AI Agent Audit Trail

A tamper-evident record of every action across six dimensions: who, what, when, where, why, how.

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Agent Attestation

Signed, verifiable proof that an agent operated within its mandate, checkable by third parties without raw data.

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Trust Score for AI Agents

A behavioral rating of the deployed agent, normalized across providers. Conduct, not capability.

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Levels of Agent Autonomy

The ladder from read-only to self-directed, and why promotion should be earned with evidence.

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Human-in-the-Loop Approval

Explicit human sign-off before designated actions execute, and why it must be recorded to count.

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AI Governance Proxy (AI Gateway)

One network control point for the agent traffic you route through it: identity, policy, evidence, zero code changes.

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Knowledge Egress

The continuous outflow of proprietary information through AI usage, invisible to classic DLP.

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Definitions are the map. The gateway is the territory.

Start with one process area. Two weeks, a dated readout, and a fixed price in writing.

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Zero Trust for AI Agents · The Complete Guide · Docs